Varieties of techniques are continually provided to enable users to communicate, one with another, over the Internet. However, these techniques are typically provided through separate connections and services. For example, one such communication technique is instant messaging. Instant messaging typically provides techniques for users to communicate via text messages over the Internet in real time. Therefore, the users may communicate in a manner similar to a spoken conversation as if both users were located in the same room.
Another such communication technique involves the transfer of voice communication over the Internet, commonly referred to as Voice over Internet Protocol (i.e., “voice over IP” or “VoIP”). Voice over IP typically involves conversion of a voice input from a sender into packets for communication over the Internet, which are then reassembled and converted by a recipient to recreate the voice input. Therefore, voice over IP provides for communication of voice data over a packet-switched network as opposed to a traditional circuit-switched voice network used by a “plain old telephone service” (POTS).
When protocols for instant messaging are different from voice communications, however, connections which are used to perform instant messaging are traditionally provided separately from connections that were utilized to provide voice over IP. Therefore, traditional services that provided instant messaging and voice over IP created two connections for each user when logging on to the service. However, in some instances the user may not even use the voice over IP connection, and instead just use the instant messaging connection. Therefore, hardware, software and network resources which were used to provide the voice over IP connection were needlessly consumed by keeping the connection “open”, resulting in a significant cost to both providers of the communication services as well as users of the services.